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Turning Brain Drain into Brain Gain: Personal Reflections on Using the Diaspora Option

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2016

Uwem E. Ite
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Extract

Brain drain is a global phenomenon and has always been so. It is a problem confronting and threatening development in Africa and other developing world regions. A study by Carrington and Detragiache concluded that there is an overall tendency for migration rates to be higher for highly educated individuals. Brain drain can therefore be seen as one of the more detrimental implications of organizational decline and crisis. Skilled migration, taking the form of brain drain and movements of professionals and job transfers, has become an important component of contemporary migration.3 Typically, in a historical context highly skilled migration involved the forced movement of professionals as a result of political conflicts, followed by the emergence of the “brain drain” in the 1960s. In the current situation highly skilled migration represents an increasingly large component of global migration streams.

Common wisdom suggests that the migration of people with a high level of human capital is detrimental for the country of emigration. In other words, the loss of skilled human resources will ultimately have a grave effect on the economy and jeopardize development programs of the country experiencing brain drain, as the brain drain is a negative externality on the population left in the source country. However, as Mountford has shown, when educational decisions are endogenous and if successful emigration is not a certainty, a brain drain may increase the productivity of a developing country. There is also sufficient evidence to show that the migration of talent from the South to the North does not always mean that developing countries lose out.

Type
Part IV: African Migrants in Europe and North America
Information
African Issues , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , 2002 , pp. 76 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2002 

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References

Notes

1. R. Wadda, “Brain Drain and Capacity Building in Africa: The Gambian Experience” (paper presented at the UNECA Regional Conference on Assessing Impact of Brain Drain on Africa’s Development, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2000).

2. Carrington, W.J. and Detragiache, E., “How Extensive Is the Brain Drain?” Finance and Development 36, no. 2 (June 1999)Google Scholar; available at http://www.imf.org/extemal/pubs/ft/fandd/1999/06/carringt.htm.

3. Brandi, M.C., “Skilled Migrants in Rome,” International Migration 39, no. 4 (2001): 101–131 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. Mountford, A., “Can a Brain Drain Be Good for Growth in the Source Economy?” Journal of Development Economics 53, no. 2 (1997): 287–303 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

5. A. Gaillard and J. Gaillard, “Brain Drain to Brain Gain” [March 7, 2001]; available at http://www.unescosources.org/news/mllstory.php/aid/165.

6. Mahroum, S., “Highly Skilled Globetrotters: Mapping the International Migration of Human Capital,” R&D Management 30, no. 1 (2001): 23–31 Google Scholar.

7. Ibid.

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9. Meyer, J.B., “Network Approach Versus Brain Drain: Lessons from the Diaspora,” International Migration 39, no. 5 (2001): 91–110 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. Gaillard and Gaillard, 2001.

11. See “Facing the Facts: Science and Technology in Africa” [March 7, 2001]; available at http://www.unesco.org/bpi/scitech/facts.htm.

12. Teferra, D., “Revisiting the Doctrine of Human Capacity Mobility in the Information Age” (paper presented at the UNECA Regional Conference on Assessing Impact of Brain Drain on Africa’s Development, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2000)Google Scholar.

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14. Teferra, 2000.

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16. Norwine, J. and Gonzalez, A., The Third World: State of Mind or Being (London: Hyman, 1988)Google Scholar.

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